Oxford: dreaming spires, a bell on its own time and the real Alice

Oxford has been a meeting of rivers, a royal capital, a battleground of scholars and townspeople and a cradle of famous stories, and many of its landmarks hide a surprise. This quiz invites you to test what you know about the city in 20 questions with pictures.

What happens at dawn on the first of May at the top of the tall tower on the eastern approach, and what does the city's Old English name actually mean? What befell the ruler who pursued the city's patron saint, and how did an empress slip out of the besieged castle in the winter of 1142? Why did scholars flock here from 1167, and what did a quarrel in a tavern cost the townspeople for nearly five hundred years?

How did Bodley's library fill its shelves so fast, and what does the word in the name of the round domed reading room really mean? Which ancient building inspired the young Wren's theatre, who founded Christ Church before its royal refoundation, and why does Great Tom sound at such an odd hour? Who lodged where when the court moved here during the Civil War?

Who was the father of the girl in Dodgson's photographs, and where was her story first told? What became of the bird that arrived with the first public museum's founding gift, who answered the bishop in the evolution debate of 1860, where did the martyrs of 1555 really die, and what is the arch nicknamed after Venice? What was the trade of the first English aeronaut, and how did Oxford's great car maker begin?

The pictures are old photographs and colour photochroms, engravings, a woodcut, maps, paintings, a caricature and illustrations, all in the public domain.